An ecosystem services approach for planning and evaluating mine site rehabilitation
| Grant number: | 14/22927-1 |
| Support type: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |
| Effective date (Start): | April 01, 2015 |
| Effective date (End): | March 31, 2019 |
| Field of knowledge: | Engineering - Mining Engineering |
| Cooperation agreement: | Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) |
| Principal Investigator: | Luis Enrique Sánchez |
| Grantee: | Josianne Cláudia Sales Rosa |
| Home Institution: | Escola Politécnica (EP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Associated scholarship(s): | 16/23021-1 - Enhancing and testing the ESAR in a bauxite mine in the Australian context, BE.EP.DR |
Abstract The research aims at developing, testing and validating an ecosystems services-based procedure to evaluate land rehabilitation in mining. Current best practice evaluates the results of rehabilitation actions against targets in terms of vegetation growth, plant diversity or soil parameters. The concept of ecosystem services, on the other hand, provides an integrative approach to gauge to what extent restoring ecosystem functions results in improving human well-being. The research will have a conceptual and an empirical component. In the former, international recommendations on good practice for land rehabilitation in mining and for consideration of ecosystem services in decision-making contexts will be compiled and structured in a procedure for assessing land rehabilitation. The empirical component will test the procedure in a bauxite mine in the Amazon where rehabilitation has been monitored for a number of years. Results from both approaches will be compared under the perspective of three key actors, namely mine managers, local community and regulator. (AU) | |